Angola – New Constitution: no longer semi-presidential

After a period of constitutional reflection (see previous posts), Angola has adopted its new constitution. Yesterday, the National Assembly approved the final articles. All that now remains is for President dos Santos to sign the document into law. There is a link to the document (in Portuguese) here.

The new constitution is not semi-presidential. Similar to the situation in South Africa and Botswana, Art. 109 states that the president is the person who heads the list of the party that wins the most votes in the general election. In addition, there is no longer any mention of a prime minister and the government is responsible only to the president. The president’s constitutional powers have also been reinforced.

The opposition Unita party boycotted the votes in the National Assembly claiming that the constitution gave too much power to the president.

I will no longer post on Angola except in the highly unlikely circumstances that there is a debate about the restoration of semi-presidentialism.

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